I had a permit for Yosemite this weekend and once again, I was not able to go. I think God does not want me to go to Yosemite this year. Tioga Pass Road was still not open on July 8. I thought for sure it would be open by July 4. Frankly, I am very disappointed. I know we had a huge snow year but all the other passes have been open for a long time now. Only Tioga Pass is still closed. Sigh. Well I already had the days off work. I should go somewhere else.
New plan: Mokelumne Wilderness.
I went into this area in early July 2019 to Cole Creek Falls. I found it very difficult because of all the snow. 2019 was a big snow year but not as big as 2023. How would it compare this year? Well …
The snow levels were about the same as before. Some spots had more snow than before, others had less. (kinda weird). Bottom line, this was going to be a very difficult hike. I was going much further than Cole Creek Falls this time.
I started out an hour earlier than in 2019. That year it took me 5.5 hours to hike 8.5 miles. This year it took 6 hours. Once again, I was spent. It is very hard walking on snow. Twice as hard as on a trail. It is never flat. There are a lot of ups and downs. It is extremely tiring. I was not even finished. I still had another 2.5 miles to hike.
I was not really expecting so much snow. It looked completely clear on the satellite after you got to the top of the ridge, but there was snow all the way down in the canyon. This made the trail impossible to follow (in addition to it being so tiring).
A couple other things I was not expecting: (1) no mosquitoes. I really thought they were going to be horrendous at 7300 ft. elevation. However, I found a small but lovely campsite out in the open beside the creek and no buggers. There were a few that came out in the evening but nothing to write home about. (2) Wester Park Creek was massive and definitely not crossable (thankfully I did not have to cross it). It is well past peak flow now, so I was certainly not expecting it to be like this. Should make for a great waterfall anyway.
I relaxed in the afternoon and chatted with my wife (I had one bar of service on my phone). In the evening I went down to see the waterfall. Another thing I was not expecting: the waterfall was absolutely huge. Upper Wester Park Falls is 191 ft. in total height. A big cascade of 63 ft. followed by an enormous 128 ft. drop. It was very easy to get down to them. You could walk down right alongside the upper cascade, then it was an easy scramble to the bottom of the lower drop. I chatted with my wife some more while I waited for the sun to go down before I could take photos.
I returned to camp and went to bed. I was incredibly tired. But if I thought this day was a frustrating and tiring one, tomorrow would be far worse …
What I should have done is gotten up early, hiked down to the waterfall at the lower Canyon Creek Lakes (pictured here), and then continued on to Boulder Creek Lakes as originally planned. If I had done this, I do not know if things would have been better or worse for me (impossible to know), but in hindsight I definitely feel I should have done that. However, after my awesome first day with four waterfalls, I wanted to sleep in and have a relaxing morning. That’s it and that’s all. And that is what I did.
That meant I would have a very short day of hiking. Uh huh. Sure, Madman. Whatever you say. It was only 1.5 hours back down to the lower Canyon Creek Lakes. I arrived at 11AM. No one was camped at the spot I saw on my way up, which is where I wanted to set up at the end of the lake. It was a perfect spot. It sure seemed like a perfect spot. Why wouldn’t it be a perfect spot?
I ate my lunch. I set up my tent. I had seven hours to wait for the sun before I could go down to the waterfall and take photos. Seven hours! What could I possibly do for seven hours!? I walked to the end of the lake and back. That took 30 minutes. This is perhaps the biggest reason why I should have gotten up early instead of sleeping in. There was nothing else to do all day long.
In the afternoon clouds rolled in. I decided to go down to the waterfall and check it out. Since it was cloudy I took some photos. This was the smartest thing I did all day. It was easy getting down to it so I was going to come back later in the evening as well. Canyon Creek Lakes Falls is a very lovely 85 ft. cascade. I had not been to it before (it is not too far above the Far Upper Canyon Creek Falls) and I was not expecting to find such a nice waterfall here. This is why I wanted to make sure I got to this one in good lighting conditions and why I decided to take an extra day camping at the lower lake. It would have been a good decision … HOWEVER …
20% chance of thunderstorms … this was the forecast. What does that mean to you? To me, this means that worst case scenario you might see a quick thunderstorm in the afternoon, lasting no more than 15 or 20 minutes. At worst. Most likely you will see nothing at all. Am I wrong? I don’t think I am wrong. Certainly nothing that would be life threatening or into the danger zone. At 5:45PM it started sprinking. I moved everything into the tent, including myself. The thunderstorm started at 6:15PM. It lasted for 2.5 hours! The first hour was a bit on and off, with heavy rain and wind, much lightning and thunder. The last 1.5 hours it was all on, non-stop. Pelting rain. Pounding wind. Lightning. Thunder. Non-stop. The heavy rain and wind did not let up even for one minute. I am not joking. I don’t know how much it rained but at that intensity it must have been something like 4 inches. My tent held up well in the wind and rain. Except for one big problem. It was raining so much that pools of water started forming on the ground outside my tent. Before too long it had crept under my tent. My tent was now sitting in a big puddle of water. It was not a little puddle, it was probably one inch deep. There is no tent that can handle this condition, in a puddle of water! The water was now seeping through the bottom of my tent. I literally could not do anything about it. The rain was pelting and the wind was blowing my tent around like crazy. There was no possibility of moving the tent in this wind. I used my towels to try to mop up the water but it was not helping. The towels were soaked. My tent inside was wet. My sleeping pad was wet. I tried to keep my sleeping bag and pillow dry but was unsuccessful. They were now wet. My sleeping clothes were still dry but that was not enough. It was now a dangerous situation. It would be a cold night. If I tried to sleep in the wet tent and sleeping bag I could easily get hypothermia. I made a decision.
At 9PM the storm stopped. Finally! It was still a bit light out. I quickly packed up my gear and began hiking out. I would hike all the way back to my car in the dark. The trail is a good trail but there are a few places where it is difficult, especially in the dark. I lost my way a couple times but got back on track. There are a lot of overgrown sections and they were all wet of course, so now I was very wet. It took 3 hours and 20 minutes and I got back to the trailhead at 12:20AM. I warmed myself up in the car. I had a 4.5 hour drive home. I had to stop at a couple rest areas to take a 30 minute snooze. I arrived home at 6:30AM, hopped into bed and slept until about noon.
Did I do anything wrong? What would you have done differently? There was no way to know it was going to rain so much that day and certainly no way to know the ground would puddle where I set up my tent. I would have been fine if it did not puddle under my tent. It was probably just bad luck but fortunate I was able to hike back in the dark. It was a crazy second day in the Trinity Alps Wilderness.
